SEXUALITY

A sign may be understood as anything that stands for, refers to, or represents something else. A sign is analysed into two elements. A signifier is the material form the sign takes, such as a written word (‘rose’), an object (the stem and flower of a rose), a trade mark, photographic images, scents, colours, and so on. A signified is the abstract concept to which the signifier points (so that a rose or the image of a rose may signify the idea of love more adequately than the word ‘love’, giving you, as a sign, what Barthes has called a ‘‘‘passionified’’ rose’). Signs may be understood as the most important units that carry and produce meaning in any act of communication. Signs are meaningful due to their position within a conventional and culturally specific set of rules (or codes) that govern their use and appropriateness.

In semiotics, a sign is analysed in terms of two constitutive components: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the physical form taken by the sign, such as a spoken or written word (‘remembrance’), an

object (a herb, the drawing of a herb), and so on. The signifier is distinct from any particular utterance, use or presentation of it. Thus, a dozen people with diverse accents and intonations of voice may all say ‘remembrance’ in their own way, and yet we will recognise the signifier that is common to each of these utterances. The signified is the concept to which the sign refers (and thus, in these examples, the idea of remembrance). Crucially, the signified is not to be understood as a particular object or event in the real world. So the word ‘remembrance’ no more signifies a particular act of remembrance than the word ‘herb’ refers to any particular herb. Similarly, a photograph of the herb rosemary, for example in a botany book, signifies what might be called ‘rosemary-ness’, and not the particular plant that the photographer used for a model. It must also be noted that a signifier may have many signifieds, and

a signified may have many signifiers. Thus, the word ‘remembrance’, the herb rosemary, or an artificial poppy, as signifiers, may all have the abstract concept of remembrance as their signified. Similarly the word ‘rosemary’ might well signify different concepts if used within a poem than if used in a cookery or botany book. The relationship between signifier and signified is thus recognised as largely arbitrary, and dependent on the cultural conventions that govern a particular sign system.